Seychelles Tourism Promotion in Guangzhou China

Guangzhou (China) – March 31, 2013 – The Guangzhou International Travel Fair (GITF) is an annual event that is held in Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong Province in Southern China. This year the fair was being held at the China Import and Export Fair Complex from March 7-9, 2013.

As the largest professional travel show in Southern Mainland China, GITF has drawn the attention of people in the tourism industry worldwide.

The Seychelles islands was showcased in a 27 sqm stand and had a panoramic backdrop of the popular Anse Victorin beach depicting the turquoise blue sea, granite boulders, and white sandy beaches.

This 3-day event is targeted at both trade and consumers and is a perfect platform to learn more about this increasingly-growing outbound tourism market.

Headed by the Chinese Manager of the Seychelles Tourism Board based in China, Jean-Luc Lai-Lam, the delegation also comprised of the Senior Marketing Executive Head Office, Amy Michel, and the Marketing Executive based in Shanghai, Ethan Chen.

Alongside the Seychelles Tourism Board team were the following local trade partners: Creole Travel Services, Rose Sham – Business Development Manager rose.sham@creoletravelservices.com, 7 South, Qi lanqiu – Asian Representative china@7south.net , Constance Hotels and Resorts, Carol Tsang – Regional Marketing Director ct@contancehotels.hk & Cecilia CHEN – Regional Marketing Coordinator cc@constancehotels.cn .

Air Seychelles, working in close collaboration with the Seychelles Tourism Board, was also represented by Stephen Leung, Sales Manager, Hong Kong & South China stephen.leung@walshegroup.com . The new 3 weekly flights by Air Seychelles commencing in Hong Kong at the end of March proved to be very popular among the Chinese trades and also Chinese travelers that had already booked their holidays in the coming weeks.

“Interest in the destination was overwhelming throughout the trade days, and the Chinese market remains one with a huge potential for the destination whereby it has been recording positive growth of around 115% in visitor arrival figures since the beginning of the year, putting it as the 5th leading market to date,” said Mr. Lai-Lam.

Meiya, one of the biggest companies in Guangzhou, that had just visited Seychelles on a FAM trip a couple of days before, was already selling Seychelles throughout the event. Ricky, the outbound Tour Department Product Manager for Meiya, stated, “Seychelles is on track to be the island destination with the highest growth potential in 2013, as it has shown popularity amongst our clients.”

“The Chinese market continues to record a positive growth on our destination. With Air Seychelles’ newly-launched flight at end of March, this will help to further consolidate efforts undertaken by the Seychelles Tourism Board to position ourselves on the Asian market. With this new flight it will help to open up access to other Far Eeast countries in attracting more visitors to the Seychelles which is now being looked at as a new destination by the operators selling the destination and visitors from that region,” commented Elsia Grandcourt, Chief Executive Officer of the Seychelles Tourism Board.

The Seychelles Tourism Board team conducted several media interviews from different media house based in China, namely, Travel Times and Guangdong Television.

For Seychelles Tourism operators: www.VisitSeychelles.org